Sophrosyne : Art of Moderation

 

‘Looking forward’ often sounds like a positive outlook, yet there is a caveat to it. When one examines an idea, he should not jump to the conclusion that the idea is not useful as it is ‘dated’ or ‘old-school’. Such a contextual reading of things can lead one to overlook some of the most endearing wisdom of the human legacy, and often this attitude merely represents one’s obliviousness to the origin of our thoughts. The contributions from thinkers of Ancient Greece have been tremendous. They have ignited the fire of Western thoughts through the work in literature, philosophy, and science. The thinkers have also proposed to us some of the first models of an ethical life. One of the most important ethical outlooks from this era is Sophrosyne, widely considered as the golden rule of Ancient Greek wisdom.

 

Sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη) is the noun of Sophronein (σωφρονεῖν), the verb that corresponds to the same idea. Often translated as ‘soundness of mind’ (noun) or ‘thinking well’, the concept has been interpreted by many thinkers through the Archaic Greece and Classical Greece, and continued to later eras. Sophrosyne has been transformed, and encompassed wider attributes throughout history. Despite diverse opinions added to the concept, the central theme of the word has not been altered. As an opposite to hubris, sophrosyne demands a clear and rational mind, which judges and makes decisions wisely, with regards to one’s limit. It is a form of moderation for an individual to exist in the world.

 

It is quite interesting to note that, while the concept of sophrosyne has first appeared in the epic poems of Homer, later thinkers have often ‘cherry-picked’ on various parts of the concept and made their assessment by focusing on their particular interests of the concept. Thus for the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, sophrosyne was related to physis and logos; for Socrates and his successors, the focus was on the rational examination and analysis of the concept with regards to ethics; and for the Stoics, the concept was used to establish one’s place in the universe. The later thinkers stressed about the concept of sophrosyne as akin to ‘knowing your place’ in the universe, and one’s ethical deliberations should be based on a sound mind and rational considerations. Also the concept of measure was associated with sophrosyne, as that provided a metric for one to weigh different options and choose the most well-informed actions. For Socrates, he has attempted to find an objective standard of knowledge and ethics, through his questioning and examination of general and particular beliefs. The Sophist Protagoras has gone even further to abandon any objective metric, and proclaimed ‘Man is the measure of all things.’

 

Of all the interpretations of sophrosyne, I find Heraclitus’s elaboration most inspiring. The Pre-Socratic thinker was one of the most charismatic thinkers of Archaic Greece, and his thoughts were so original that they can still be considered fascinating and contentious by today’s standard, just like when one reads Nietzsche and Zhuang Zi. Asserting that the universe was governed by the cosmic order known as ‘Logos’, Heraclitus stressed the importance of sophrosyne in the famous fragment B112, a memorable advice that deserves to be quoted below.

“Sound thinking (σωφρονεῖν) is the greatest virtue and wisdom: to speak the truth and to act on the basis of an understanding of the nature of things”

-Fragment B112

 

Thus for Heraclitus, the attribute of sophronein meant getting closer to the nature of things. Only which one embraced physis, which originated and was governed by Logos, could the individual acquire true wisdom and lived well.  This statement reflected the philosopher’s opinion that the human world, which was part of the universe, was modelled after the cosmic (divine) world. For Heraclitus, true wisdom meant the realization of the fact meant that the human world, being part of nature, was in no way distinct or separate from the cosmos. The appreciation of this limit has implications of one’s ethical outlook, as one will deliberate with considerations regarding one’s nature and limitations and avoid the influence of hubris and other folly. Thinking well is the virtue of sophrosyne. 

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics

Seeding the Universe with Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic thinker who was literally related to Socrates. Elder than Socrates by about 30 years, it was probable that one of Anaxagoras’ student, Archelaus, might have been a teacher for the young Socrates. Socrates has certainly been influenced by the teachings of Anaxagoras’ school of thought, yet he has since departed from his teacher’s approach for more original directions. Like Democritus of the Atomist school, Anaxagoras was a natural philosopher with a strong scientific mind, contributing not only to ontology but also empirical fields like astronomy and meteorology. The natural philosopher was also a close associate of Pericles, and the Athenian politician has learnt a lot from the wise philosopher. Presumably due to his mind-blowing philosophy (we will see how later) and the fact that he was acquainted with Pericles, Anaxagoras was soon charged with impiety – an offence that could apparently forced onto anyone who diverted from a traditional outlook of Greek religion, and he was exiled as a result. The philosopher’s reputation might be conflicted in his lifetime, yet his subsequent influence to later thinkers is profound, from theoretical science to Hegelian studies.

Anaxagoras has developed a complete system for this philosophy, and some of his key ideas are still insightful by today’s standard. Yet the interpretation of his philosophy has proved to be challenging because certain of his doctrines were expressed in rather obscure or ambiguous ways, and that resulted in drastically different interpretations from later academics, which often depended on how they defined some of the more ambiguous terms in the Pre-Socratic thinker’s work. Some of his more abstract ideas may also sound strange if we view them from the standard of modern empirical science. My aim here is to spell out the consensus of Anaxagoras’ key doctrines and hopefully provide some starting points for philosophizing his interesting ideas.

Like many of his fellow Pre-Socratic thinkers, Anaxagoras wished to find out the origin of the universe and where it was heading to. Thus he placed a lot of concerns on the issues of both cosmogony and cosmology. For the Greek thinker, every thing in the world had a tendency to be developed into its final form. Yet the attributes (or properties, a more straight-forward term to address Anaxagoras’ complex wordings) present in the final form of that thing was already latent in the original form of the thing in question. So we can say that at the start, a thing has already possessed the properties that would allow it to map out its trajectory to develop into the final form. 

The reason why this could happen was because of a property asserted by Anaxagoras. While he has used a number of different ways to describe that particular idea, including the word ‘seeds’ (which the meaning was supposed to be metaphorical rather than literal), that has been known as ‘homoeomeries’ since Aristotle. ‘Homoeomeries’ are defined as things that remain in the same form after they are divided. Intuitively the notion sounds impossible, and this concept has been the most controversial of Anaxagoras’s system. While the idea may be theoretically possible in an abstract manner, say, if one has a bar of pure gold and it is cut into half, we can argue the resulting halves are the same as the original because the gold atoms are homogeneous and there are no ways to distinguish between the before and after. Yet in this case we are assuming the particulate notion of matter, and that was probably not Anaxagoras’s intention because he was never attracted to any particulate theories of matter to start with.

Anaxagoras proposed that at the beginning of the universe, its state was an original mixture with infinite substances in it. All the substances would eventually be developed to all things in the world. Thus, these substances could be seen as the ‘seeds’ for the eventual world formation. Through the mixing of specific proportions of mixing the various substances, things are transformed into their respective final forms throughout the evolution of the universe. Before we move on we can notice an implication of Anaxagoras’s doctrine: even if the components of the ‘seeds’ are the same, if the proportions have changed, the outcome will also be very different. From this reasoning many researchers of the field have suggested that the Greek thinker has proposed the possibility of innumerable worlds, though they did not reach a consensus on whether these worlds were co-existent or successive.

So, what is the string-puller behind the whole system? Anticipating theological or even psychological perspectives in the modern sense of the term, Anaxagoras proposed ‘Mind’ (Greek: nous) as the organizing principle of the universe. Many commentators have since questioned the scope of the word, whether the philosopher intended to mean as a divine substance or merely the psychological capacities of animate things (like humans and animals) in the world. Vague as it may seem, Anaxagoras’s notion of ‘Mind’ did suggest it as a universal force of nature that facilitated the development of the universe. Thus for the Pre-Socratic thinker, Mind was infinite, pure and independent from the original mixture. The Mind initiated the transformation of the universe through a first rotatory movement, and the ‘seeds’ in the original mixture would divide and separate to start their transformations. It was also omniscient and possessed the ‘know how’ (a buzz word for our era?!) to transform the world towards its very end.  I would argue that the notion of Nous is possibly the philosopher’s most important influence to the later generations, as many will easily equate ‘Mind’ with ‘God’ through a similar line of reasoning.

Anaxagoras’s philosophy is therefore a teleological one, of which many later philosophical systems have shared similarities. An example is in Socrates’s discussion of Homeric epic, where he placed a focus on the role of military leader, having the obligation to ensure his soldiers’ survival. Socrates was teleological in the sense that he concentrated on the purpose of the leader’s action – to ensure his men were safe. In a later era, Aristotle would similarly designate the individual action of the ruler to a teleological purpose of offering advantage to the group he was governing. Aristotle pursued the concept of teleology even further. In his work on zoology, he went as far to propose his generally teleological view of nature.  The philosopher offered teleological explanations as the understanding of goals and final causes present in life. 

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics

Reality Check with Parmenides

 

In Plato's 'Phaedrus', there was a famous allegory about a charioteer controlling a pair of winged horses with very different characters. One of them, a mortal black horse, symbolized the impulses and appetites common to all of humanity. That was paired with an immortal and eternal white horse, that symbolized the positive spirit cherished by humans. As the two horses showed very different temperaments, it was up to the charioteer – who symbolized the rational mind – to control them and led their ways to a life of enlightenment. The chariot story is an allegory of Plato's theory of the soul. It is also interesting because the pair of contrasting horses points to an intellectual influence from a number of Presocratic philosophers collectively known as the Eleatic School. That included Parmenides of Elea, and his followers Melissus and Zeno.

The members of the Eleatic school were staunch rationalists. The ontology advocated by these thinkers were all speculative and rational, and their ideas were more abstract than the perceptions most people had regarding the universe in their times.

The remaining fragments of the poem by Parmenides can be considered the locus classicus of Western Metaphysics. The Presocratic philosopher was probably the first ever to propose a consistent account of the nature of reality. Parmenides wrote his poem in Homeric hexameter, chronicling the journey of a young man to meet a goddess, who the latter promised that she would tell about 'all things' to him. What she has shared with him, however, was an approach to arrive at the real knowledge of things.

The poem suggests that humanity can choose between 2 approaches to understand about themselves. The Way of Opinion (Greek: doxa) is to acquire knowledge by the action of seeming, and to know the world merely through the senses. In contrast, the Way to Truth (Greek : aletheia) is to acquire knowledge by the exercise of reason. The dialectal aspect of the 2 choices was evident: Parmenides was among the first thinker to distinguish rationally between appearances and reality, and proposed that what ‘appears to us’ is not necessarily equate what ‘is’.

Parmenides designated the metaphysical substance of his philosophy as ‘Being’. It was an unity, and some sources even stated that Parmenides proposed a spherical shape for that, which was indeed a good analogy for the idea of unity. Contrary to the human perceptions that there were motion and changes around us, the metaphysical substance for Parmenides was static, unchangeable and timeless. Parmenides’ metaphysics was revolutionary because the reality he has speculated was very different to the way humans perceived the world, through the application of the common sense. The speculative aspect of the Eleatic school, by the rigorous exercise of reason and logical deduction, would influence the future philosophers who took a rationalist approach to metaphysical issues. 

Thus Parmenides’ system was a philosophical monism, which proposed only one type of metaphysical substance. His ideas denied the notion of plurality and void (vacuum). Parmenides asserted that his metaphysical substance of ‘Being’ was indivisible and continuous. These beliefs were in the starkest conflict to the later atomists, who accepted the presence of void and divisibility of matter. More important, the Eleatic philosopher denied the possibility of ‘non-being’, which he argued as logically impossible.

The teachings by the Eleatic school were important in Greek Philosophy because many subsequent thinkers would response to the questions posed by this school of thought. That included the development of various pluralist schools and challenges from the sophists of Classical Athens. Gorgias, an acclaimed sophist, wrote 'On What is Not', spoofing the Eleatic system. He challenged the metaphysical possibility of ‘Being’, and laterally denied the possibility of Divine or a first cause. The sentiment was not dissimilar from the agnostic or atheistic views by many other fellow sophists. 

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics

Xenophanes : Presocratic Slasher

Xenophanes was a slasher in ancient Greece. He was a poet, a philosopher, a theologian and also an avid traveler. He has lived a long life and has travelled to a number of places. If Xenophanes is a person of today, he is certainly a key opinion leader, writing travel blogs and poems and doing Facebook live. But when you look up for his username, take care and don't mix it up with 'Xenophon', who was born in later era than Xenophanes and he was one of Socrates' students.

Xenophanes was against 2 things in life – human-looking gods and jocks. Through his understanding of poetry and satirical wit, he has written a lot of poems to satirize, criticize and think about issues in the culture of his days. His critique on theological issues has led to a rational inquiry of religious and spiritual themes evident in later philosophy, like Parmenides and his successors. For his problems with the jock culture, we will deal with that in the end.

Xenophanes was original because he was one of the first Western thinkers to have a string commitment in rationalism. Through his exercise of reason as evident in his writings, he was an original architect of rationalist theology, using reason and valid speculations, rather than mythological sources, to explore the concepts of the Divine. Xenophanes was well-versed in a number of different style of poetry, yet his poems always exhibited a satirical tone and impressive witticism.

The conception of gods has already been described in the epic poems of Homer and Hesiod. Xenophanes, who was alive centuries after the two epic poets, had issues with their ideas of the Divine. First, Xenophanes was very against the notion that the Greek gods and goddesses were anthropomorphic. In his poems, the pre-Socratic philosopher mocked the idea of human-looking gods, and stated that if an ox could conceive of a ‘god’, that god would likely look like an ox too. In a satirical comment that would be considered a nasty racial slur for today, Xenophanes believed that the Ethiopian gods would resemble Ethiopians with their own facial features, which he was not particularly fond of.

Why did Xenophanes think that humans would believe their gods to be mega-versions of themselves? With an explanation that had a lot of resonance to the science of today, he believed that the images of human-looking gods were merely the psychological projections of humans. Humans made their attempts to shift the center from the Divine back to themselves, and projected their own opinions on the attributes of gods. It is as if the ancient humans were saying: ‘The gods, after all, are just like us.’ Ironically, this opinion has shared similarities in the views of some future philosophers, who embraced atheist or materialist doctrines, yet that is in no way true that Xenophanes would have denied the existence of the Divine.

Other than the issue of human looks, what concerned Xenophanes even more with regard to the Homeric conception of the gods was that they were often immoral. Indeed, the divine family on Mount Olympus has often been compared to a dysfunctional family, and every member was more than capable to claim their fair share of moral transgressions. The immorality of the Homeric gods is often overlooked by many, yet to Xenophanes that was an important issue.  Because the thinker opined that the behavior of these divine figures, who were expected as ‘role models’ for humanity, were morally inconsistent. The lack of objectivity in these antics paralleled human’s own projections of the Divine. What Xenophanes was looking for all the time was a theological outlook that was rational, objective, and could serve as an ethical guide to humanity.

‘One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought.’

-Xenophanes

‘All of him sees, all thinks, and all hears.’

-Xenophanes

Hence for Xenophanes’ rational theology, there was a single, non-anthropomorphic God, which he often termed ‘The One’. Xenophanes’ God, to start with, is timeless. Just that all the other Pre-Socratic thinkers’ ideas of First Cause, it exists outside of time and had no beginning or end. The Divine is also rational and omniscient – it knows everything in the world. It is omnipotent, meaning that it is so powerful that it has the ability to do anything possible. We may find these attributes similar to what we think about God, and indeed it is, because the philosopher’s revolutionary way of understanding God has shaped the way how later generations would have approaches the issues of religion.

There is a caveat to Xenophanes’ assessment. From a philological perspective, many commentators have questioned the implications of the word regarding the divine in Xenophanes’ original version. As we may not be aware there are some careless duplication errors, the commentators are unsettled by the fact that ancient thinker has used a plural form for the words ‘Greatest among gods and men'.’ That appears to be contradictory to the theological views he has been expressing throughout his poems, namely that there is only one God in the universe. Most commentators have agreed that the specific issue of wording should not impact our understanding of Xenophanes’ ‘One-God assumption’, for which he has maintained firmly and consistently throughout all his surviving work.  Many scholars in the classical studies have advised the readers not to take the word too literally, saying that maybe the word ‘gods’ was just representative of Xenophanes’ often satirical tone. These ‘gods’ can just be the deputies and underbosses of the Big Boss, and no matter one wants to designate them as ‘gods’, ‘angels’ or ‘spirits’, the idea does not change. Xenophanes’ philosophical system is strictly rational and monotheistic.

Xenophanes’ opinions regarding the Divine has two important implications for later understanding of religion and spirituality. First, by abandoning the polytheistic system of Homeric gods, he introduced a monotheistic conception of the divine. Not only this has influenced much of the philosophical systems of the Presocratic thinkers, almost all these thinkers searched for and proposed a first cause of things, the theological outlook would influence many other religions that still existed today.

Second, by asserting a non-anthropomorphic divine figure , Xenophanes has provided the readers a more abstract conception of the greatest being. Ancient beliefs in gods tend to rely on some concrete conceptions, that the gods resemble humans, only are way more powerful and immortal. Early people may easily think that the gods resembled King Triton of Little Mermaid, without the little brat Ariel - an old gentleman with white beard, holder of a crane that symbolized power, and talked in a commanding yet fatherly tone. That makes sense as that would lead to an easier identification with the divine though this might be unintentional. That took the evolution of human mind to have the capacity to believe in an abstract idea, and thus Xenophanes conception could be seen as a revolutionary one.

Xenophanes’s divine foreshadowed the Parmenidian Being, but there was a difference in terms of both philosophers’ focus. Xenophanes had a more religious motivation and tried a provide a justified and rational picture of divinity, while Parmenides and his successors was concerned to postulate a metaphysical reality.

Xenophanes apparently did not share the ancient view of metempsychosis, the reincarnation of souls, with thinkers like Pherecydes and the Pythagoreans. In a satirical tone, he mocked at the notion that one should not harm a dog because the animal might be a reincarnation of one’s family in a previous life. Given this rather caustic-toned example, many would have proposed that the philosopher was not into this theory.

Xenophanes was a very special type of nerd. Believing in the power of reason, he despised the values of athleticism and festivity of his days. He certainly felt that a sound and rational mind was more preferred to physical prowess. In fact, his inclinations had a lot of influences on later Greek philosophy, as people turned their aspirations from Homeric warriors to orators with eloquence and intelligence. This slasher of the ancient times, who has contributed to so diverse fields and possessed such a dynamic stream of thoughts, was certainly no basketcase for current standard!

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics

 

Conatus Classics 2020

 

Ancient Greek Thinkers

Mythos, Logos, and the Presocratics

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/05/mythos-logos-and-presocratics.html

 

Nomos / Physis

Part 1  http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/06/nomos-physis-part-1.html

Part 2  http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/06/nomos-physis-part-2.html

 

The Physis of Things

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-physis-of-things.html

Pherecydes

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/07/pherecydes-thinking-caveman.html

 

Miletus

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/07/getting-ionic-at-miletus.html

Thales

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/07/2-or-3-things-i-know-about-thales.html

Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

Part 1 : Pythagoras and Philolaus

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/07/nailing-maths-with-pythagoras.html

Part 2 : Pythagoras and Plato – Encountering Metempsychosis

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/07/passing-souls-with-pythagoras.html

 

Sophocles : Antigone

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/p/classical-greek-antigone.html

Solon

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/09/solon-law-and-order.html

 

Homer’s People

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/11/homer-peoples-poet.html

Democritus

Part 1  http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/12/democritus-part-1.html

Part 2  http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/12/democritus-part-2.html

The ‘Greek Dramatists vs. Filmmakers’ Series

Introduction

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/08/greek-dramatists-vs-filmmakers-prelude.html

 

Homer

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/08/homer-first-man-of-literature.html

 

Homer and Aeschylus

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/08/from-time-to-time-homer-x-aeschylus.html

 

Aeschylus and David W. Griffith

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/09/greek-dramatists-vs-filmmakers.html

Sophocles and Akira Kurosawa

Part 1  http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/09/greek-dramatists-vs-filmmakers_27.html

Part 2  http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/12/sophocles-x-kurosawa-riddle-of-man.html

 

Euripides and Sam Peckinpah

http://emockedlaw.blogspot.com/2020/12/greek-dramatists-vs-filmmakers.html

 

Thank you very much for your support!

 

by Ed Law

Conatus Classics

Democritus, Part 2

‘Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of 

his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.’

- Democritus 

Democritus is the natural philosopher par excellence. Through his commitment to atomism, the ancient Greek thinker has provided us a fully naturalistic view regarding humanity. Though some subsequent thinkers might find his ideas dangerous – for Plato that was too materialistic; for Aristotle that was not continuous – classical atomism stood the test of time and it experienced an exciting revival in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. A brief digression would be appropriate, because what happened at the later era has found a few parallels with the antiquity.

While the Pre-Socratic philosophers inquired into natural phenomena by giving up mythical explanations and divine intervention, the mechanical philosophers of 17th century interrogated nature by distancing themselves from the Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy prevalent in medieval Europe. The mechanical philosophers were the practitioners of natural philosophy, and they were often scientifically-minded and placed their trust in empirical methods for the acquisition of knowledge. Philosophers like Gassendi, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Boyle and Newton were advocates of corpuscularianism – a theory that proposed corpuscles – groups of particles (rather than individual atoms) as the origin of all things. Like atoms, corpuscles could aggregate to form more complex structures. The resulting properties of the corpuscular structure, as perceived by our senses, would lead to different observable properties we could experience. In particular, John Locke was a philosopher who endorsed corpuscularianism. His epistemology took a lot of influence from this theory, and his idea was indeed very similar to the way how modern Chemistry works. 

In Locke’s epistemology, ‘real essence’ and ‘nominal essence’ was distinguished. The ‘real essence’ of a thing was its corpuscular structure, which corresponded to its primary properties (like the ‘molecular structure’ of Chemistry). In contrast the ‘nominal essence’ of a thing was its properties that resulted from sense perceptions, corresponding to the secondary qualities (like how the chemical compound looked or smelt, for example). So in Locke’s theory the key of acquiring true knowledge was to start from an understanding of the real essence – the structure of corpuscular structure, the arrangement of the particles – and then moved up from the explanation of primary qualities to secondary qualities. The approach was not very different from an extrapolation of microscopic properties to macroscopic qualities commonplace in natural science.

It is important to note that, unlike modern physical sciences, philosophical atomism and corpuscularianism are not empirical per se, because there are no instrumentations that can verify the presence of atoms and particles. Many natural philosophers and scientists from the 17th century have attempted to use different empirical approaches to demonstrate the presence of atoms and corpuscles, yet they were mostly met with failure, either due to epistemological issues (for example, an attempt to extrapolate macroscale observations into micro-/atomic scale observations) or due to poor design of experiments (e.g. primitive microscopy and transport phenomena), resulting in invalid conclusions. It was only in later centuries that a conclusive demonstration of atomic theory for physical science would become possible.

Returning to Democritus. What did the ancient atomist tell us the nature of soul? Though described rather vaguely, Democritus believed humans possessed 2 kinds of atoms: soul atoms and body atoms. One soul atom corresponded with one body atom, and the atoms were all energetic in a sense that they travelled through the human body. Democritus also had other theories regarding various issues from vision to dreams, yet they were rather unbelievable by today’s standard. What is more important is a vision offered by both Leucippus and Democritus – that atoms were governed by necessity. The atomism from these thinkers was deterministic in nature, and it was very unfortunate that they have failed to specify what role chance might play in their worldviews. 

The atomism I have described so far has a few implications for us to bear. Thus, for Democritus there was no Aeschylean cosmic justice, as in ‘The Oresteia’. There was not a notion that the Divine would eventually come to exert justice, just because the time has not yet come. Democritus’ atomist view was distinct, and caused some controversy, because that was not teleological (and that certainly troubled Aristotle in particular). In Democritus’ system that was not a wise and all-knowing spirit to guide us, nor did we have any final purposes for our existence. Atoms were moving through the void, yet they did not know what they were going to and what they would eventually become in the final stage. That made the contentious ideas of atomism even more nihilistic: if reality is all about a bunch of atoms shooting around the universe aimlessly, that what is the point of life? What do we need to guide ourselves to lead a moral and fulfilling existence? How the doctrines of atomism could be correlated to ethical considerations have always been a challenge for the thinkers from the school of atomism. Philosophers from later era, such as Epicurus and Lucretius, have tried very hard to compile a systematic worldview that accounted for the materialistic perspective and its potential moral implications. Democritus also has stated some implications of his metaphysics for ethics, and they were mostly organized as maxims. 

Democritus, through his denial of teleological purposes and cosmic justice, took a more naturalistic view for human lives. In a view not very different from B. F. Skinner, the ancient philosopher believed our actions were the responses that originated from our interactions with the environment, rather than other spiritual factors. The behaviourist view would influence many materialists for the years to come. Democritus also advised his audience that the fear of gods was pointless. When humans did not use reason and observations to understand natural phenomena, like a thunderstorm, they would attribute these mysterious phenomena to superstitious explanations – like ‘Zeus is angry’ or ‘Hera is jealous’, and resulted in an unnecessary fear and worry. Democritus, among other fellow natural philosophers, might not be considered atheists in a strong sense, yet they all encouraged the people to focus on the real reason why the phenomena happened – the scientific reasons.  Future generations of atomist like Epicurus and Lucretius would further elaborate this line of thought in their work.

‘A life without a feast is a long road without an inn.’

-Democritus

Democritus has told us a lot about atoms, yet he also had a real lot to say about ethics. Given the large amounts of ethical statement from him, and the doubt of completeness, it is very difficult to say if he has got a consistent moral philosophy. Nevertheless, by reading many of these thoughts of wisdom, one can easily picture Democritus to be a great personality, with sparks of humor and witticism throughout his writings. While the philosopher might have devoted his life to the study of nature, Democritean ethics were full of humanistic concerns. One should not be surprised by the aim of human life endorsed by the Laughing Philosopher - to have an optimistic outlook and to achieve a peace of mind. For Democritus, happiness for life was not merely about sensual pleasure and material wealth, it was acquired from a spiritual peace and freedom from perturbation of lives. Why not let Democritus speak for himself?

 ‘For joy and absence of joy is the boundary of advantage and disadvantage.’

Democritus maintained that prior to a life of joyfulness, one should exercise reason.

‘Reason is a powerful persuader.’

Democritus believed in education. He believed an opportunity to learn could counteract against misfortune. 

‘Education is an ornament for the fortunate, a refuge for the unfortunate.’

‘The hopes of the educated are stronger than the wealth of the ignorant.’

‘Nature and teaching are similar, for teaching changes a man’s shape 

and nature acts by changing shape.’

Thus he stressed the importance of avoiding bad influences in life.

‘Frequent association with the wicked increases a disposition to vice.’

‘When wealth comes from wicked deeds it makes the disgrace more conspicuous.’

Democritus cherished values like nobility, courage and self-confidence. He felt that these were the very qualities towards a fulfilling existence.

‘Great joys come from contemplating noble deeds.’

‘Courage makes disaster small.’

‘A good man takes no account of the censures of the bad.’

Yet he might have occasional charges of sexism, like many of the ancient thinkers.

‘To be ruled by a woman is the final insult of a man.’

Nevertheless, he thoughtfully advised us not to laugh at other’s misfortunes, lest that one day, that would be our turn to suffer. 

‘Those who take pleasure in the disasters of their neighbors do not understand 

how the affairs of fortune are complex to all, and they lack appropriate delight.’

Finally, a statement strangely suitable for the current situation in our world.

‘Do not suspect everyone – but be cautious and safe.’

(End of Part 2)

Concluding Remarks

Thus we arrive at the end of Conatus Classics 2020. I feel great to have started my first article on the history of thoughts in May, and have the motivation to write a number of articles about Pre-Socratic and Classical Greece, who I have always fascinated with and yet did not have a chance to talk about that in my previous articles. I will keep up the work and continue to share with you the ideas from these great minds who have ever graced human history!

by Ed Law

Conatus Classics

Thank you for your support! 

Conatus Classics will see you again in 2021!

Democritus, Part 1

 

If you are aware of my science blog, or you have ever encountered a gamer by the name of ‘The Laughing Chemist’ online, you may wonder where I got this alias from. The name is actually an inspiration from one of the philosophers I admire the most in the history of thoughts: Democritus of Abdera. Democritus was probably the last of the key Pre-Socratic philosophers, and he could be considered the ultimate natural philosopher of Ancient Greece. The great philosopher was committed to the almost completely materialistic accounts of everything in his world, which was a stance unprecedented until that stage of Greek philosophy. His philosophical outlook was probably the most complete and systematic of all of Pre-Socratic thoughts, from his account of reality to advice of how one should live ethically. To many, Democritus was one of the first natural scientists of humanity. His theory of atoms might have been undermined for many years in the Western culture, yet it experienced a revival in the Scientific Revolution of the 17^th century, and that would eventually become the foundations of modern physical science. From his writings one can easily get the impression that Democritus has lived as a very fine human being – his emphasis of a cheerful outlook on life has earned him the name of ‘The Laughing Philosopher’. And you will be even happier if you understand true knowledge!

There are two aspects, due to various reasons, that we are not sure about Democritus. The first aspect is the connection of Democritus to another philosopher, Leucippus. In ancient writings, the two philosophers were often mentioned together and it was alleged that Leucippus was the teacher of Democritus. While there are some sayings which are attributed to Leucippus, we are not certain if he has existed at all in history. Thus, the materialist theory of atomism tends to be associated with the Laughing Philosopher, or they are attributed to both philosophers at the same time.

 

The second aspect is the reception of Democritus in antiquity. While Democritus is considered as a Pre-Socratic philosopher, the notion is actually quite misleading because the designation implies that Democritus lived before Socrates. The truth is, Democritus and Socrates were actually contemporaries and indeed Democritus was younger than Socrates! So it is quite likely that Socrates and Democritus were aware of each other’s ideas, but we did not know if they have interacted with each other at all. The reason is because Socrates never wrote anything – all we know about Socrates’ thinking was from Plato’s work. While in Plato we have read that Socrates has shifted his focus from an interest of natural philosophy to humanism, we did not have any idea of their opinions on Democritus, because Plato did not mention Democritus at all. It was alleged that Plato hated Democritus’ ideas (it could not be proved), and that made sense because Plato would likely perceive Democritus’ materialism to be belonged to the sensual world rather than the world of Forms. It was a puzzling move because even when Plato despised the Sophists as swindlers of knowledge, he still mentioned their teachings and challenged their ideas in a number of his world. So leaving out Democritus was a big mystery. Aristotle, who also disagreed with Democritus for different reasons, was less hostile in this respect and gave the natural philosopher some credits in the development of philosophical thoughts.

 

Democritus, and his mentor Leucippus, were advocates of atomism. The word ‘atom’ should be familiar to anyone in science, yet the meaning for the ancient thinkers were broader – and in a sense less precise – than the demands from scientific rigor. The Greek word for atom is ‘atomos’, which literally means ‘uncuttable’. Literally, an atom for these materialist philosophers was a single particle. The thinkers took the liberty to say that the atoms had different size, shape, and also texture, leading to the different things that human experienced in the universe. The atomists asserted that atoms were not infinitely divisible, meaning that one could not indefinitely divided an atom to a smaller piece. There was a limit to the division, and the limit signified the essence of that thing.

 

The origin of ancient atomism followed a larger trend of the development of Pre-Socratic philosophy: the responses towards the Eleatic school of philosophy. Parmenides of Elea, who was considered as the founder of the Eleatic school of thought, was probably the first who proposed a rational account of reality in Western history. For him, the metaphysical origin was ‘being’, which was unchangeable, static and spherical. The reality Parmenides speculated was very different from the appearances our common senses addressed to us, thus he was considered as the founder of the field of metaphysics, which concerned the reality of things. Parmenides’ appearance-reality distinction would eventually be taken to extreme by later thinkers such as Plato, and his followers have proposed further accounts and questions regarding reality, such as questions of movement and multiplicity. The philosophers after Parmenides – Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus – have all come up with their own solutions to the Eleatic school’s challenges. Denying Parmenides’ assertion there are no void (empty space) in reality, the atomists believed that only atoms and void existed in the world. Democritus was innovative in the sense that he was probably the first thinker to propose and address the importance of void for out world. Moreover, atoms possessed the attributes of movement, and they were in constant motion through the void, and the atoms could collide with each other to generate new things.  It should also be reiterated that a key disagreement between the atomists and the Eleatic thinkers were the indivisibility of things. Thus one can see that the motivation of atomism was not from a desire to discover some novel ‘science’, but actually as a philosophical response to the Eleatic challenge.

 

Democritus’ materialistic account of things was therefore an eliminative atomism. That means only atoms are metaphysically real, and all other appearances are conventions or mere illusions. This standpoint was reminiscent of the nomos-physis distinction of Classical Greek, succinctly summarized by one of his most famous quotes: 

“By convention sweet and by convention bitter, 

by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; 

but in reality atoms and void.”

-Democritus 

The distinction between atomic reality and convention would also influence later thinkers. In the 17^th century, the natural philosophers stressed the distinction of primary qualities and secondary qualities of things (details in the next article). In short, the primary qualities reflect what the thing really is – its atomic compositions and arrangement, that will not be altered due to perception by sensory organs or other subjective factors. The secondary qualities, in contrast, are originated from sense impressions – the ‘convention’ side of things.

From the understanding of atomic properties, Democritus also proposed the mechanism for the formation of the universe. Because atoms have very different properties, they can be combined in different ways and that can result in formation of different worlds. Democritus believed that there were infinite number of worlds due to the combinatorial arrangements from atoms, and indeed he turned out to be correct from modern astronomy!

 

There are some caveats we have to be aware of regarding Democritus’ revolutionary thinking of the world. The first one is that, unlike modern empirical science, the theory of atomism was completely based on speculation. It was a rationalist account just like the metaphysical speculations of Parmenides and others. Democritus and his school certainly had no way to observe the existence of atoms, and therefore he could not claim a higher standing for empirical science than the competing theories did. Nevertheless, one should be impressed by his keen insights into things and how he successfully foresaw and inspired later generation of scientists.

 

The second point is that Democritus had a very skeptical attitude of using sense impressions to arrive at true knowledge. That should be surprising for many because many empirically-minded thinkers tended to be materialists for their understanding of the word. Democritus advised his readers against the use of their senses to know something, asserting nothing was true when one acquired them from their sense organs. While I do not think Democritus was completely hostile to observations and empirical methods (he was also an astronomer), he has addressed the possible limitations of our senses to deceive us. It is ironic that his beliefs in atomism would eventually inspire and guide the development of empirical and physical science for the centuries to come.

 

Democritus has given us a very naturalistic view of our world. Are there still any places for the Divine in human existence? What is the direction of human progress? How should we live well according to the atomist doctrines? Well, Democritus had a lot to say about all that!

 

(End of Part 1)

 

by Ed Law

Conatus Classics

Greek Dramatists vs. Filmmakers : Euripides x Peckinpah

 

Euripides and Sam Peckinpah can be considered as the ‘bad boys’ of their respective crafts. Their revolutionary approaches have often exploded and deconstructed the status quo of their artforms. As a contemporary of Sophocles, Euripides has competed with the former tragedian in a number of occasions. Due to the more controversial themes in his plays, Euripides has won less of the competition at City Dionysia, and got a few 3^rd places (which unfortunately was the last place of the competition). The people in his era might not get the concerns of Euripides, but the modern audience do: viewing these plays by today’s standard, one will be impressed by how forward-thinking this great tragedian has been in his critique of morality and theodicy, and he has committed to the strongest sense of psychological realism until that point in the history of literature. Euripides’ influences can be found in great playwrights and novelists such as Ibsen, Strindberg and Shaw. Some of his most iconic characters have metamorphosed into the many archetypes we found in cinema and novels of today. Medea, the resourceful woman who committed many acts of revenge and violence in her story, leading to high body-count and culminating in killing her children to strike back at her husband’s infidelity (this plot was likely an Euripides’ innovation), would become the modern ‘Gone Girl’ type of character, which the Japanese word ‘akujo’ (あくじょ / 悪女) is an appropriate description. Meaning ‘villainess’ or ‘immoral woman’, this type of character often has a perverse sense of charisma in its own right, and that is the type of character where actresses like Isabelle Adjani and Yoshino Kimura are in particular gifted at portraying. If we try to transpose Euripides’ style to the standard of today, works like ‘Medea’ sit comfortably with the style of European Art Cinema. In fact, it should not be surprising that Pier Paolo Pasolini and Lars von Trier have respectively made their own cinema versions of the play, with quite different emphasis.

Sam Peckinpah was a member of the era of New Hollywood cinema in the late 1960s. As an iconoclast of movies, he revolutionized the way of the approaches towards action sequences in cinema. Though his uses of slow-motion shots, fast-cut and analytic editing, with multi-camera captures, action sequences has become more realistic and exciting since Peckinpah. Yet, his idiosyncratic method appeared to come with a cost: the realism he was striving for resulted in spectacularly bloody violence in many of his films, and he was nicknamed ‘Bloody Sam’ for exactly this reason. ‘The Wild Bunch’, widely considered as Peckinpah’s masterpiece, was once seen as the most violent movie in the history of cinema when it first came out in 1969. What is ironic is that the blood-splattering moments account for less than 10 minutes of the 2.5-hour runtime of the film, signifying the intensity and impact of these cinematic images to the audience. Peckinpah was an auteur who specialized in the genre of Revisionist Western – he tried to dissect the true sides of the history of American Frontier. While he had a strong emphasis on history and culture, he was just as concerned about human nature and how that shaped our behavior in the world. Often with a nostalgic and elegiac tone, Peckinpah could also be compared to an ancient Greek poet Theognis, who composed elegiac poems on nature and advocated for a moral existence.

 

An innovation for Euripides was the kind of characters his work focused on. While all the 3 Classical Greek playwrights concentrated on tragic characters, those from Aeschylus and Sophocles tended to be noble and larger-than-life characters. These characters did receive loads of injustice and suffering throughout their ordeals, yet their dispositions and behaviors often served as ideals for the viewers to strive towards. As Sophocles have allegedly noted that his characters were benchmarks of how one ‘ought to be’ in real life, Euripides revolutionized in portraying the experience of the underdogs and rather ordinary people. In particular, given the rather imbalance of power and rights of the both sexes in ancient Greece, Euripides’ tragedies gave voice to the female characters more than the other 2 playwrights did. Notwithstanding, Euripides’ stories were far more realistic and juicier in some aspects. Sex, desire, alienation, madness, aberrations in personality were topics abound in his dramatic universe and they found a lot of resonance to the modern audience. Even when the 3 tragedians were considering the same topic, their emphasis were remarkably different. Take the character of Electra, for example. In ‘Oresteia’, Aeschylus focused on the big picture, chronicled the revenge of Orestes towards her mother. After the death of the mother, the narrative purpose of Electra has diminished. When Sophocles wrote his version of Electra, he focused on creating a psychological portrait of this character, stressing the dispositions and thoughts that led to her reunion with Orestes and the eventual bloodshed. Euripides, in contrast to his predecessors, did not want the audience to believe that the sibling has ‘made their oikos great again’ after the slaughtering of their mother. The tragedian concentrated on the psychological consequences on these two characters after the damage has been done, amplifying the turmoil the sibling had to endure.  

 

The Sophocles / Euripides connection seems to find some parallels with the Kurosawa / Peckinpah connection, and that is the reason why I write this series of articles in the first place. Peckinpah, who admired Kurosawa, has made ‘The Wild Bunch’, which was heavily influenced by ‘Seven Samurai’. While both films may have some narrative similarities, the outlook is in stark contrast, and one can see Peckinpah’s world view was more pessimistic than that of Kurosawa’s (though I would admit this may be an over-generalization in some respect). If Sophocles and Kurosawa demanded their viewers to look carefully at and consider every specific details in the picture, then what Euripides and Peckinpah were doing was to expose all the conflicts and contradictions and thus tore the whole picture apart.   

While Euripides often had strong and intelligent women in his tragedies, and also the tragedies were often named after a female character, it is difficult to consider that as 'feminist' if it puts it into the modern context. I would argue Euripides's approach was similar to the films of Howard Hawks or Kenji Mizoguchi, who appeared to portray women in a strong light, with the independent 'Hawksian women' who often helped or outwitted the male characters in his Film Noir and screwball comedies, or with Mizoguchi, his sympathetic portrayal of women who suffered under the social context. One can argue that it is rather unlikely that a demonstration of feminism was these filmmakers' intention.

 

Yet for Sam Peckinpah, that is a more difficult position! Peckinpah’s cinema has been criticized by many as misogynistic. The female characters, often not important in the narrative sense, were subject to the brutality and violence from men. Classic examples are films like ‘The Wild Bunch’ and ‘The Getaway’, and ‘Straw Dogs’ has reached a level of extreme controversy due to an intense scene of sexual violence towards the female protagonist. This issue regarding Peckinpah’s style is very contentious and the opinions have changed a lot throughout the years. Personally, I do not agree to the viewpoint that Peckinpah was misogynistic. From my observations of all his films, Peckinpah always placed the blame on the male characters. Peckinpah appeared to have a belief in a Hobbesian state of nature, yet he has always demanded humans to be responsible for their actions. If the women in his films were treated unfairly in any sense, that was because the world was flawed as being male-dominated and the characters failed to control their desire and aggression towards others. In fact, for ‘Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia’, a minor yet rather moving scene was when the protagonist and his girlfriend were threatened by a band of violent hooligans, the girl was willing to sacrifice herself to protect the protagonist, eventually raped and murdered by the bad guys (and the protagonist avenged by killing them all). Such a gesture is in no way degradative to women, that affirms women’s courage and gumption. Putting the dramatist and the filmmaker together, one will be baffled by the fact that they were both considered haters of women, with very different reasons: Euripides was considered misogynistic because he frequently portrayed evil and hysterical women; Peckinpah due to his belittling and undermining of the female personality.          

Nevertheless, we should not overlook that Euripides did provide a positive portrayal of female characters in some of his tragedies. He was also a pacifist and advocated for the end of war and maintenance of peace. Work like ‘Trojan Women’ and ‘Orestes’ provided a look into the effects of war on normal people, and he often used his tragedies to comment on the historical context that surrounded him, the fact that Athens was declining at that point and soon entered into military conflicts.

     

Peckinpah situated in a similar kind of era. In fact, Peckinpah has indirectly stated and alluded to the fact that the violence in his film reflected a critique of real life events, especially the Vietnam War. The violence in ‘The Wild Bunch’ was a backlash and wake-up call for the audience, who has become desensitized to the news on the television regarding the ‘progress’ of the Vietnam War. Yet, Peckinpah’s position on war and violence was an ambivalent one. In Straw Dogs, Peckinpah seemed to share a more pessimistic and complex viewpoint – he did not know the answer, and he challenged the viewers to come up with their own answers. On one hand, Peckinpah was critiquing the failure of the pacifying attitudes of the protagonist, David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman). They were bullied by a group of rowdy town men, and Sumner was perceived as a coward and weak by his wife. That went as far when Sumner was tricked and his wife was raped by the men without his knowledge. Surprisingly, the table was turned when in an attempt to save a youngster (who Sumner had no commitment to protect) from the rowdy men, Sumner turned NBK-mode and became so violent that he literally killed every one of these men (bear trap, boiling oil pot, shotgun to blow one of the men’s feet apart, fire poker to a brain matter-splattering end, you name it). The breaking of Sumner’s spectacles signified the breaking point of civilization. Sumner, holder of a professorship of theoretical physics, shifted from a civilized demeanor back to an animalistic, primal state of nature, championing in aggression more than the complex sets of his equations on his blackboard. Peckinpah has maintained consistently that he intended Sumner, who was supposed to be weak and humble, to be the villain of the film. If Peckinpah condemned Sumner due to his choice of violence and his war-like tendencies, then at the same time he was casting doubts on the civilized approach to the conflicts, and that was approaching a sense of nihilism. I am a big fan of ‘Straw Dogs’, yet I can’t make up my mind about the complex issues portrayed in the film. Peckinpah was likely just as undetermined, too.     

Phaedra

What is it when they say that men “love”?

Nurse

That is the sweetest thing, child, and also full of pain.

Phaedra

We only get the second part.

-Euripides, 'Hippolytus'

The conflicts in Euripides’ plays are even more apparent if we consider the heated nomo-physis debate of Classical Athens. Works like ‘Hippolytus’, ‘Orestes’ and ‘Medea’ addressed the implications of this dichotomy. Euripides's meticulous design inferred that, the more the audience wishes to find some order or categorizations in the narrative, the more they will discover the irreconcilable aspects of these conflicting perspectives. While less explored in my previous articles regarding the debate, the distinction of nomos and physis actually followed a more intimate yet sexist view – that nomos was often associated with reason and the male identity, while physis was often associated with emotion and the female identity. The sad fact that some people can still use this assertion to undermine the ability of women in life suggests that humans have not changed much after all. Moreover, ‘physis’ took a more dangerous meaning in a sense relevant to drama: it tended to symbolize the uncontrollable forces of nature, and the chaos that resulted. In ‘Hippolytus’, Hippolytus and Phaedra served as ideas in human form: Hippolytus served as a symbol of ‘nomos’ while Phaedra served as a symbol of desire. The 2 characters had a parallel development in terms of narrative – their flawed character led to their deaths respectively. Hippolytus, a moral and restrained man, could not contain his hubris and felt that his assertion of reason exceeded that of the Divine. Phaedra could not contain her sexual desire and led to conflicted feelings of both love and hate towards Hippolytus. While ‘Medea’ could be considered as a nice portrait of a psychopathic mind, who aced the art of persuasion and rhetoric, Euripides gave Medea complexity by showing the conflict of her reason and passion in a memorable monologue before she murdered her children, showing the bleak impossibility to reconcile both ends. Euripides actually went as far to question if the nomos-physis debate would really contribute to humanity at all – as that seemed the debate to be a key concern for the Sophists of Classical Athens in particular. In ‘The Bacchae’, a god-intoxicated madhouse of drama, Euripides wished to imagine a world when nature and culture were more harmonious and co-existed without any tiffs. Dionysus, a god for wine and also for destruction and chaos, was the protagonist of the play and what took place in the tragedy said more about humans than about gods. We will return to this later, yet at this stage, the statement that ‘one can only win by not playing’ sounds totally reasonable.

 

Peckinpah also imagined, yet his thoughts were nostalgic and elegiac. Peckinpah’s films were also characters in changing times, when they perceived that they were outmoded and could not catch up with the present. Peckinpah’s concerns were realistic and existential, and it was about how the characters found their places in the new world, or how they were destructed by the world. In films like ‘The Wild Bunch’ and ‘Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid’, Peckinpah’s heroes often reminisced the good old days and how fxxked up the universe has become. It was not that they could not accept new things, but the great traditional old ideals – brotherhood, friendship, selflessness - have been undermined by the new values, which were often based on self-interest and corporate greed.  

Euripides's narrative world also questioned the point of reference we took for granted to govern our behavior. Justice, theodicy, moral objectivism were often absent in Euripides’ tragic world. In ‘Herakles’, our hero had a mingled background of both divine and human aspects. While the play appeared to stress Herakles’ status as the son of the Divine, throughout the play he was defined by his human failures and fallacies. Euripides, like his predecessors, appreciated the importance of including supernatural and divine elements in his work, yet they all welcomed both spiritual and secular explanations. Incidents could be attributed to both supernatural causes, or rationalistic causes such as necessity. In the play Herakles has been put into misery by Hera, Zeus’ wife, because the god’s infidelity has led to the birth of Herakles. After proving his manhood by enduring the 12 Labors, everyone might expect a happy ending for our hero. But with Euripides’ master stroke, the hero was again doomed. Euripides’ version of ‘Herakles’ ended with our hero killing his children in a bout of madness, and Hera was behind all this. While the play did not deny Hera’s divine intervention, Euripides provided a moral process to Herakles by having him to feel responsibility for his mistakes. That made Herakles a secular thinker, who did not desire to attribute spiritual factors into explanations. Yet, ‘Herakles’ served as one of Euripides’ greatest critique on traditional conception of religion and gods. When Herakles cried in despair how someone as nasty as Hera could be qualified as a goddess, he was questioning the conception of divine benevolence, and echoed the ‘best of all possible worlds’ theme from theodicy.   

 

Sam Peckinpah’s cinematic world did not place much emphasis on religion or spiritual issues, yet he believed in the transcendence of ideals, when people remembered the past and the great things other people have achieved. At the end of ‘The Wild Bunch’, the 4 old gunmen decided to confront the rouge general and his many associates, in order to save their young friend. Though they were fully aware that they would likely sacrifice their lives by doing this, they decided to hold their beliefs and took a stand on the issue. The climax saw the gunmen killing close of a hundred of the ‘bad guys’, with the help of a Browning automatic throughout the bloodshed, and they all died at the end. The posse, which was assigned to pursue them throughout the film, arrived and investigated their dead bodies. They could not stop feeling a sense of respect to these old men. Though they were enemies, the posse appreciated the values these dead men represented. When the leader of the posse, an old friend of the gunmen, decided to move on, Peckinpah juxtaposed the final images of all the 4 men – they became memories and legends for the future generations.

The conflicts and contradictions inherent in the characters of Euripides led to alienation, and eventually destruction. The alienation experienced by Herakles was not only apparent in his psychological struggle, but that also led to his madness and demise of his children. While Dionysus was a god that signified excitement from art, uncontained desire also led to chaos. The fact that the bundles of drives and properties could not be sorted out in the psyche would result in an identity crisis and a complete breakdown. King Pentheus learnt it the hard way in the tragedy: he literally was torn apart by a number of mad and intoxicated women, the followers of Dionysus, at the end of the play when a party was rolling. The gruesome fate signified the destruction of the human psyche.

 

The characters in Peckinpah’s films also suffered from alienation. For David Sumner in ‘Straw Dogs’, he was trying really hard to be friendly and hospitable. The façade of ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ could not sustain the fact that he was a cold and analytical person, and with the right triggers he became an aggressive killing machine. For ‘Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid’, the two friends became enemies after Pat became a sheriff. Originally sharing similar idealistic beliefs about freedom, Pat feel uneasy because he had to cater the demands of the corporate power, and he knew that soon he would have to face Billy the Kid. Pat lamented the great old days that he has always desired has passed, and he was not the one who once thought himself of. The story ended tragically when Pat finally killed Billy during an ambush. In a symbolic movement by Peckinpah, Pat looked into a mirror and shot the mirror with his pistol, signifying the symbolic death of a conflicted identity.

Concluding Remarks

Euripides and Sam Peckinpah challenged his audience by confronting them with narratives that ends often did not meet. The viewers have to engage with these memorable yet questionable characters, and their views may likely change or evolve through time. Many of the work mentioned in this article deserves a full treatment – and that, will be another story!

 

by Ed Law

Conatus Classics

 

Euripides plays mentioned: Medea, Electra, Herakles, Hippolytus, Trojan Women, Orestes, The Bacchae.

 

Peckinpah films mentioned: The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, The Getaway, Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.